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Gathering your group of players can sometimes prove a bit difficult, which explains the one-month gap between our first session and this one. And even when a date is set, no one can ever foresee any real life setbacks that would prevent one of them from playing. This is how we lost our sellsword for this session, as the Humakti mercenary got sent by King Ilgalad Trollfriend on a secret mission for the time being.

However, as we didn’t want to cancel this game, we decided to run a side quest aimed at strengthening the characters’ community, weakened by the fall of Whitewall but also by the death of Orlanth and Ernalda. Besides, the whole band of heroes would have had to wait for the Dark Season to undergo the Dead Point quest anyway.

As a side note, kudos to the player who helped me find the quest they would play. In a way, this means that the characters had quite a lot of agency in this session, a feature I actually enjoy in the games I usually run.

The cast

The heroes

Hegermast Sharp-Tongue, adventurous Orlanthi skald

Drake ap Quackford, haunted Humakti warrior, durulz

Therona, one-eyed Humakti huntress

Kestel the Frowning, cynical Humakti sellsword

The Toena Clan

Wealth 18

Communication 09W

Morale 12 (+6 at the end of the session)

War 12W

Magic 18

The story

1622 ST, Fire season. Drake, Hegermast and Therona are sitting by the fireplace, discussing how to best serve their community. The auguries have foretold a bad harvest this year, which will just provide enough food to sustain the clan. However, without the Storm god and the Earth goddess, the situation is unlikely to turn for the better soon. Therona has tried to hunt, but the game is scarce as well, and she barely manages to bring back enough food.

Saying that morale is low would be an understatement, and even though our heroes originally decided to undertake the Dead Point quest, King Ilgalad Trollfriend has sent Kestel the sellsword on a different mission while waiting for the Dark season, the appropriate time for this endeavor.

Without Orlanth and Ernalda to protect their clan and their tribe, Drake and Hegermast are discussing the possibility to undertake a heroquest that would lift up the morale of the Toena clan. Drake then suggests the barely known Humakt the Champion quest, which gives a new perspective on how Orlanth could eventually be given Death, Humakt’s sword, by showing respect to his brother.

The rationale behind this quest, as they manage to explain it to the clan’s Ring, is to form a bond with Humakt in the absence of other gods. The heroes’ goal is to turn the Toena clan into a stronger community, lift up the morale of its members, and ensure its survival. The Ring accepts this explanation, and will help them prepare the heroquest.

As they need to find a fertile place that saw a lot of death in the past, Therona secretly asks her ghosts to help her. They accept at the condition she helps them redeem their errors. The ghosts tell her that they are Sartarites who have been punished by joining the Lunars in slaughtering their kinsmen, and that they also felt the death of the gods. They want her to go to the Culbrea tribe and convince its king, Ranul Turn-Tail, to give up his alliance with the Lunars. Therona accepts the deal, and she returns to the others with the location they need.

Once there, with the Ring, some weapon thanes and carls, Drake puts his singing sword, symbol of his initiation to the Humakti mysteries, on the fertile ground, which symbolises Ernalda. Besides, Therona cannot see any ghost in this place, a sign that a clean death had been given here. As the clan’s wyter disappeared with Orlanth’s death, Hegermast calls his air spirit to represent Orlanth’s power. Stones are carefully placed on the field to represent graves, lines are traced to represent field plow lines, and everyone gathers at the center of the area to start the Humakt the Champion heroquest.

Roles are assigned: Therona puts on the mask of Humakt, Hegermast dons the mask of Orlanth, and Drake the durulz covers his face with the mask of human for all the casualties who will die during this quest. The landscape shifts and they find themselves on a mountain. The journey has started.

In the first step of the quest, Orlanth orders Humakt to give him his sword. His weapon thanes insist and throw in some comments to show that the Death God is no better than a thrall. Both gods battle for sixteen days and sixteen nights, the weapon thanes are killed, and Orlanth loses the contest.

In the second step of the quest, Orlanth comes back and demands Humakt’s sword again, this time by treating him like a cottar. The Storm god is also followed by cottars who are all killed by arrows, and interesting deviation from the original myth, which validates Therona’s use of her bow as an initiate of the Death god. Orlanth and Humakt fight for four days and four nights, and eventually the Storm god loses.

In the third step of the quest, Orlanth treats Humakt like a carl, and the death god still refuses his sword. Thanes and carls are killed, Orlanth is vanquished again, and a new enemy comes and attacked the Death god, a centaur duck – Drake using his Beast rune this time to represent a beastman. While the god and the beastman battle against each other, Orlanth, exhausted, can see from a distance that a wave of spirits of Darkness are lurking, waiting to attack them all, a part which clearly doesn’t belong to the myth.

Humakt beats the centaur duck and Orlanth admits the Death god is the greater warrior of the two. And then the threat of the Darkness spirit looms more closely. In a contest against the centaur duck, Orlanth manages to have the beastman swear an oath of loyalty to the Storm god, and the three of them rush to fight their new opponents. The centaur duck fights with his beak and hooves, Orlanth with the Voice of the Storm, and Humakt with his sword.

Finally, in the last sequence of the myth, Orlanth offers salt and water to Humakt, and offers him a seat in his Ring not as a brother, but as an equal, and as his Champion. The Death god can see the wisdom in this and accepts, ready to lend his sword. Then Orlanth asks to borrow Death, and Humakt accepts. For a very brief moment, the Death god can be seen in all his forms and glory at the same time, human, durulz, etc., as a sign that beasts and men stand equal in the eyes of Death. The rest of the ring cheers in celebration. Then the landscape starts to shift again.

Our heroes are back on the fertile land, and everybody can feel that Humakt has now joined them. An alliance has now been forged with the Death god, who offers protection as the clan’s champion. Hegermast wields Drake’s sword and he will keep it for their next quest as a sign of their new covenant.

Morale at Toena is on the rise again, and King Ilgalad Trollfriend orders the construction of a Humakti temple to celebrate this union. New initiates are to be formed there to prepare for the next war. (Morale as increases by 6 points as a direct effect of the quest)

Finally, Therona decides to overcome her fears and tell her friends about her ghost-sight. Drake and Hegermast consider her ability as a sign of a lack of clean death in the previous war, and not as curse. She tells them about her oath to the ghosts, and they all realize that if Orlanth and Humakt can change their mind, a king can also be convinced to change his friends. They clearly have a new mission now.

End of the session.

The game

Even though I’ve got mixed feelings about my GMing of this session as a whole, I must admit that in hindsight, I learned a lot about using the HeroQuest system, setting a game in Glorantha, and GMing in general. After all, I’d rather fail forward than keep a blind eye on my own failings.

The first point worth mentioning concerns semi-improv gaming in Glorantha. I know my players quite well. We’re used to playing other games together such as Hillfolk and Fiasco. Improvisation is one of our skills as players and GMs, and railroading isn’t usually something we’re concerned about. But despite all that, the beginning of our game was mostly dominated by the only player who knew enough of the setting to propose a course of action. My two other players were literally blocked.

Obviously, one could retort that being given enough info on the general situation in their clan, many things could have been done at a low level to help their community, instead of trying to undertake some heroic endeavor right on. And as soon as I started to say that to them, I bit my tongue and realized that I couldn’t expect any of my players to come up with any ideas when they felt so overwhelmed by such a gigantic setting.

Basically, the amount of background information on the setting is so impressive that the mere task of coming up with a decision can feel daunting. And without any clear landmark to anchor themselves to, they reached a point of player’s block. And the mistake is mine as I should have found a way to start our session on simpler premises instead of expecting my players to make their characters behave like heroes straight on.

Another point I learned with HeroQuest Glorantha is how to make railroading “unrailroady”. Running and playing a heroquest may represent a difficult task to gamers who are used to discovering the plot as it unfolds before their character’s eyes. Here, in this world, both the players and the characters are told the elements of the heroquest before undertaking it.

Technically speaking, in the specific framework of the heroquest, we all know, we the people around the table but also the heroes in our mind’s eye, what the steps are, and where it has to lead to. In a way, it might look like replaying a dungeoncrawl module to some. However, I was absolutely and positively surprised to see that the ritualistic aspect of the myths, plus the heroquesting rules in the HeroQuest system offered enough room for both the GM and the players to offer a refreshing narrative, joined with its own surprises.

To some of us, that was a whole new way to game, and extremely far from being unpleasant, as far as I’m concerned. We all knew the steps, but the goal and the roleplay definitely mattered in how the heroquest ran. Besides, this phase of our session showed me how decisively important bumping down a result with a mastery was.

Rulewise, this session also taught me the importance of the community creation rules as a compelling motivation that may drive the characters who can have an important impact on the transformation of their clan or tribe.

To conclude, running a session which was quite subpar in my opinion has allowed to me reflect on what I still had to learn on how to make my games more compelling and engaging, and not just with HeroQuest Glorantha. So even though I still have a lot to learn about running great heroquests, I’m really glad this experience taught me the basics of this peculiar way to game.

Two weeks after our first session, our group met again on Google Hangouts, except for one player who had to skip this session. This meant that Dubghall, the party’s trickster, was missing, probably called by Eurmal for some weirdly cryptic purposes. Besides, another player also couldn’t start on time either, and Flicker the huntress was scouting the area when the session started.

The cast

Tarak the Sly Skald, initiate of Issaries

Orlain the Novice Weaponthane, Initiate of Orlanth Adventurous

Flicker, the huntress, initiate of Vinga

Dubghall, the clan’s resident trickster, Initiate of Eurmal

Hindala, the compulsive shaman, Grazelander of the Golden Bow, initiate of Jardanroste Polestar

In the last session, our heroes had reached Alda-Chur and were getting ready to accomplish their mission.

The story

After discussing how to get into the city, the heroes decide to pass the main gate instead of sneaking in. There they are stopped at the gate by guards composed of Lunar spearmen and Sartarite soldiers who check the movements into and out of the city. Tarak the skald reveals they come from the Black Rock clan to show off his poetry talents. Hindala is declared as his muse and Orlain as his guard. The guards are suspicious as the Amad tribe is considered an enemy. But as they don’t really look threatening, they are let in.

When within the walls, they’re joined by Flicker the huntress who managed to sneak in unseen. They try to find a way to reach Brolankar. They know that he frequents a « library », but no one in the group knows what such a place is, as none of them has ever seen a scroll. After asking somebody in an inn and getting a answer, they decide to split up and explore the city.

Hindala walks to the Foreigners Quarter where she meets a childhood friend of hers, a woman called Braza, who is here to trade some wool and fabrics. However, she remains cold to the shaman as she doesn’t understand why she never came back to her people. Hindala understands that such things like friendship take time and hugs her before leaving.

Flicker walks around the Sun Quarter, with the Great Hall which is being rebuilt and made bigger to fit the ego of the city’s king, and the Bronze Palace quarter with temples to Yelmalio, the Red Goddess, the Seven Mothers, and also to the Lightbringers except Orlanth. Eventually, she manages to find the Lhankor Mhy temple, and also assess the security around all these buildings.

Tarak, followed by Orlain who guards him, goes to the Skald corner of the market place and recites a poem he’s just composed about his muse, Hindala the fair, and some trivialities on Alda-Chur. Orlain then spots some weaponthanes from Harvar’s inner circle who look at them, puzzled, and not really decided on what to do with them as the skald isn’t uttering any words of dissent.

The night is falling, the Red Moon shines in the sky and the heroes gather in the room of an inn. They all agree on having Hindala use her spirit magic again to see the whereabouts of Brolankar. She decides to invoke a spirit of Darkness. She dances in a spiral and the spirit appears. She bargains the sacrifice of insects with it, then chews and swallows some. The spirit leaves and at the very same time comes back through her mouth, letting her see what is happening now.

She can see the prince looked after by four Sartarite guards, in a library, reading scrolls. They signal him it is time to walk back to his quarters, which causes him to whine as he was reading an interesting treaty on the Lunar Empire. They get him to return to the Great Hall anyway.

Eager to take advantage of this opportunity, the heroes dash to intercept them, with Flicker taking another route to attack from the rear. They will fight them. As they arrive, Tarak’s alynx spirit shouts a deafening yowl that startles the guards, while Flicker shouts words about Moon spirits escaping from the temple, and madness flying in the air.

The Sartarites guards are shocked, surprised and at a loss. Suddenly, Orlain attacks, using his superlative agility. Brolankar crouches so as to avoid taking a blow. Hindala creates an air shield to protect Tarak, and in no time, three of the four guards are taken down.

Flicker tries to attack the last guard from behind but fails. Suddenly, Brolankar picks up a sword and slashes the guard’s back, taking care of him.

Now saved, the prince thanks them but tells them he cannot leave the city yet as Eulina, the daughter of the Tres tribe’s king, is still kept hostage and has recently been convinced to undergo the rites of the Red Goddess and become an initiate of her cult. Should the Lunars succeed, this would represent a huge blow to the girl’s tribe.

Hoping for the prompt return of their trickster who might come up with a crazy plan to save her, the session ends up in the street, with the bodies of four guards in the street, their mission partly achieved as they’ve found the prince but still need to bring him back to their tribe alive, and another urgent matter to take care of.

The game

With this second session, I managed to run the system a wee bit more smoothly than last time, although I still constantly need to check the tables in the HeroQuest Glorantha rulebook, and I still feel that my combats aren’t as engaging as they should be.

However, I am really glad to have the support of my players who can help me with optional rules I didn’t remembered, and relevant points that can improve our game. In a way, it feels like team work, and it is just the way I love my games to roll.

Concurrently with my other HeroQuest Glorantha campaign, I’ve started to run an adventure for a group of five players based in North America, also via Google Hangouts. We had already had a character creation session a few weeks before this session, which means everybody was ready when our game started.

A very important point, though, was that everyone agreed to play two-hour long sessions, as time zone not helping, it is morning in North America while it’s afternoon here in France, and short sessions would prevent blocking their full Sunday. This also means that I needed to revise the whole structure of my scenario and cut it into more engaging scenes that would feel like a short adventure for each. And as you’ll read below, every GM should also always be prepared to build on your players’ fantastic unexpected ideas.

The cast

Tarak the Sly Skald, initiate of Issaries

Orlain the Novice Weaponthane, Initiate of Orlanth Adventurous

Flicker, the huntress, initiate of Vinga

Dubghall, the clan’s resident trickster, Initiate of Eurmal

Hindala, the compulsive shaman, Grazelander of the Golden Bow, initiate of Jardanroste Polestar

The characters are all part of the Black Rock clan from the Amad tribe, which is openly rebellious to the Lunar Empire, and the adventure starts at the beginning of the Fire season, in 1621 ST.

The story

Our heroes are on their way to Alda-chur, Sartar’s second biggest city, as their clan leader, Daradestra Swift Spear, a devotee of Vinga, entrusted them with a mission of critical importance: freeing the son of their tribe king who was kidnapped three months ago and held captive since then.

Three months ago, Garhinharl Shadowcat, king of the Amad tribe, waged war against Harvar Ironfist, the despotic ruler of Aldachur coalition, and the characters’ tribe lost. But the hardest blow came when Brolankhar, Garhinharl’s son, was captured by the tyrant’s army. The king tried to broker a wergild, willing to pay 200 cattle in exchange for his son, a King’s ransom.

However, Ironfist refused, preferring to keep the young man as a political prisoner. Travelling on horseback, our heroes decide to stop midway in a friendly tribe in order to obtain more information on how to enter an enemy city with Lunar sympathies. They then head to Fort Alone, a fortified town in the Tres tribe that serves as a central trading place.

As they don’t want to openly state the actual reason of the journey, Tarak the skald lies to the guards and pretends they’re going to Alda-chur for a poetry contest. The guards watching the fort gate start to be suspicious, as no member of the Amad tribe would go to an enemy city just for fame and glory. Fortunately, Dubghall the trickster manages to convince them that it’s actually a strategy to confuse the enemy.

Inside the fort, Tarak learns from another skald who has just travelled back from the city that Brolankhar isn’t actually chained in a jail, but kept as a “guest” in the great hall. Meanwhile, Orlain talks to Argyle, a local weaponthane, to check the overall mood. They become friend very quickly and he learns that Eulina, the beloved daughter of their clan leader, had also been kidnapped two years ago. And although the Amad tribe is eager to go back to war, the Tres tribe has lost all their will to fight.

Wishing to find out how the young man is faring, Hindala enters into a trance state and reaches the spirit world. She tries to project herself to Alda-chur, but she’s quickly blocked by spirits of the Sun and the Moon. However, the spirit of the Polestar, always shining in darkness, tells the shaman that Brolankhar, an initiate of Lhankor Mhy, has been biding his time in the main library, learning all he can about the enemy until he is liberated.

Then Hindala wakes up. At the same time, Dubghall manages to locate a group of local smugglers who gather around a very smelly area near the moat, outside the fort. He tries to lure them into revealing who could get him into Alda-chur unseen, pretending he has some shady business to do there. The gang of smugglers asks him for money and the trickster uses his Illusion rune, playing with their greed. He is tossed a tablet with some writing on it, and is told to give it to Uralh the Toothless, a local smuggler there. He will be found outside the walls of Alda-chur, at another very smelly place, where nobody would ever go.

When Dubghall comes back, Flicker notices that the smugglers are barging into the marketplace and point at the trickster, having obviously noticed that they got fooled. The huntress uses her Illusion rune to delay them by having them believe that all the carpets are flying about due to a violent gust of wind. Calling her companions, they all jump back to their horse and leave Fort Alone. The trickster is the last to get out of the place and he denounces the smugglers to the guards at the gate, who are eager to catch those thieves.

The session ends with our five heroes on a hill overseeing the city of Alda-chur.

The game

Thanks to my previous session with the European group and to the character generation session with this one, I felt I had a much better grasp on the basic rules, which will allow me to explore more specific points in the system in the upcoming games. I had originally planned to have my players arrive in Alda-chur at the beginning of this session, but the players’ idea to stop at Fort Alone was just fantastic. There, they could try out some of their character’s abilities and feel better prepared to undertake their mission.

Besides, the two-hour format we decided to use for this adventure gives me feeling that we can spend more time playing one big scene per session, something that I’m definitely not used to. This also forces me to avoid overseeing any detail that might matter and to offer some new interesting dynamics to all the games I run in general. Our next game is in two weeks, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the characters will bring about their mission.

The object of this review, ‘Sharper Adventures in HeroQuest Glorantha’ is a 34-page long chapbook written by Robin D. Laws as a fundraiser for the Kraken convention in Germany.

Developed from an idea originally pitched by Fabian Küchler, this very small and short supplement is actually meant to be guide to gamemastering in the world of Glorantha, and more particularly to the Heroquest Glorantha roleplaying game.

On a more personal note, I am fairly new to the world of Glorantha, and this is with very few expectations that I am going to approach this book. Basically, what I need for my future games can be summarized in two points: how to lay out a plot in Glorantha, and how to engage my players with this cyclopean setting.

Plot structure

In this book, Robin D. Laws takes the screenplay approach and cuts a scenario in four distinct parts which will be made of obstacles:

The premise, or basically the problem that will get the characters to gather and to go adventuring together.

The point of no return, or the encounter that will definitely push the party forward.

The escalation, or an event that makes the party realize that things are much worse than they originally thought.

The resolution, or the final scene in which the heroes will have to shine and outdo themselves.

All these explanations are punctuated with many examples and also a couple of charts that greatly help picture the author’s point.

However, what I particularly enjoyed in his explanations is this push toward moderate improvisation, toward a better malleability in presenting the obstacles to the characters, but also toward more collaboration between the players and the GM, especially at the beginning of each session.

And this leads to the next part: players’ engagement in a game.

Emotional engagement

Many GMs can attest that there’s nothing worse than prepping up a game to finally have players who are not interested in what is going on in the session in the least. This is why all along this book, Robin D. Laws provides many pieces of advice regarding on how to hook up players in order to have them participate more pro-actively during each session.

And basically, it all revolves around the “emotional stakes” for each character, a central feature around which some of his other designs revolve around, like the Gumshoe system and the DramaSystem.

The bottom line is for the player to find a reason for her or his character to step forward and go on such or such quest, or adventure, instead of rejecting it. This would ultimately lead to having players be more pro-active during a session, and less submissive to events thrown at them by the GM.

But the author goes further in giving tips on how to modify already published scenarios by adding these emotional stakes into them in order to make them their own.

Conclusion

To conclude, Robin D. Laws’s Sharper Adventures in HeroQuest Glorantha is a fantastic book that shines by its simplicity. Taking the screenplay approach of dramatic plot structure, this supplement is an amazing tool of new and veteran GMs to use in Greg Stafford’s world, but not only.

To be fair, in almost three decades as a RPGer, I’ve grown used to seeing and reading many of books on GMing advice, some which had been absolutely relevant to my needs and others which were definitely not what I needed.

But here, Robin D. Laws is offering us yet another proof of his talent. In 34 pages, he manages to harness and synthesize the few key elements a GM needs to keep in mind when running a game, mainly plot malleability and player engagement.

I thought I’d read a GM guide to HeroQuest Glorantha, but in fact I discovered what looks like an amazing digest version of Robin’s Laws of Good Gamesmastering, the 2014 reboot.

The points he develops in this chapbook are short, spot-on and clear. They manage to formulate the features I’ve way too often strived to put in my games in a very simple way.

I’ll finish with this: Sharper Adventures in HeroQuest Glorantha is the GMing guide that all GMs need, for any kind of games, as beyond the plot construction structure advice it provides, this book focuses on and cares about the central element to any game, your players and everyone’s fun around the gaming table.